25

Apr 2019

The shift to strategic review

Quality Australian Tax compliance outsourcing: the shift to review

By: Odyssey Outsourcing
Tags: compliance, Firm of the future, strategic review, switch to advisory

Australian outsourced tax preparation outsourcing services can help public accounting firms of all sizes. Regardless of size of the Australian accounting firm, a quality outsourced services provider will return high quality work, in an exceptional format, in a timely manner.

Today we have a quick look at one area many accounting firms struggle to control: preparing and reviewing quality compliance work.

Australian accountants are swamped, and many are turning to offshore labour forces to solve their labour shortage problem. Unfortunately, while this lower cost offer does give some short term cost advantages, it doesn’t solve some of the major inherent problems inherent in the Australian accounting firm.

One of the sad disadvantages in offshore labour hiring (not outsourcing) is that it allows firms to slide a little longer on taking the big decisions to get to being a firm of the future. As the whole firm is now engaged in continuing the compliance struggle, albeit with staff in two different geological locations, other firms are moving into other areas outside compliance.

Continuing with compliance to the exclusion of considering new opportunities is a self-limiting strategy.

And yes, we’ve heard all the excuses about where do we find the managers of the future, if we aren’t training them in doing compliance work. The reality is that the accounting world is changing. People don’t learn or use “T” accounts anymore. People don’t use books with “T” accounts now. We can all lament the fact that the younger people aren’t drilled in the “times table” and probably can’t add without a calculator or an iPhone, at least not as fast as the older workers. And we can lament that younger people probably can’t use a numeric keypad as fast as the older workers. Many have no idea how a fax works. Many have not heard a dial-tone connected to a modem. Cloud accounting systems. Auto matching of transactions. I’m pretty sure new graduates don’t want to be re-keying bank statements, and compliance hasn’t suffered with all these changes.

And maybe we probably don’t really need to understand how double sided accounting actually works: are there more important things? There is certainly lots of non financial dynamics that the software companies have been trying to capture in different areas of their software. Staff turnover, staff efficiency, productivity, days on query, days to get a job out the front door. The financial health of a company,

So if we can accept that Australian compliance staff probably don’t need to be re-keying bank statements in order to prepare them for compliance review work, then we can make the quantum leap to the conclusion that staff should be taught to review from the get go.

If quality work is coming back from a trusted outsourcing services partner, with the first line of quality technical review done on-site at the provider’s office, then the Australian compliance staff should be responsible for the second-line high level quality strategic review.

The Australian second-line high level quality review should be at a big picture level, understanding the client’s situation, making recommendations on asset protection, and strategies to take the business of the Australian client to the next level.

If you’d like to talk to Odyssey about how we can assist with the provision of high quality outsourcing work, then drop us a line!

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